“I suppose,” he said in a lower tone, as he leaned his hips against the railing and folded his arms on his breast, “I suppose it’s really your business and not mine. Don’t imagine that I’m trying to interfere in your affairs.”
“Oh, goodness, no,” she almost jeered. “I’m afraid there’s not much danger of your ever interfering the least bit! Why, Mauney, I don’t mind if you give me the very devil for going to that dance!”
“Only tell me. Why did you go with Courtney?” he asked with a deliberation that provoked her.
“There are just about forty-seven reasons,” she stated with thin grace. “First, because I knew I shouldn’t, second, because at the time he asked me I was furious with you for not calling me up for a whole week, third because I wanted to do something to relieve my fury.”
“But, I told you,” he interrupted in a quiet, polite tone, “I told you why I didn’t call you up.”
“You told me after I had promised to go to the dance.”
“Yes, but you don’t understand,” he said, gently, taking off his straw hat and turning the rim slowly around between his hands. “It was not the dance. Can’t you understand my feelings?”
“I understand them only too well.” Her dark eyes were now burning almost savagely, and her hands tightly gripping the balustrade. She spoke in an unnaturally restrained tone. “It’s Max Lee, of course, I’ve tried to feel sorry about him being ill. Perhaps I ought to be trying to comfort you. If so—too bad. I’m just being true to my feelings, that’s all. You had to be so thoughtful of that man, didn’t you, Mauney? Had to let him down so very, very easily. You couldn’t let him die like a man, unhappy and miserable, but like a man you had to smooth out his path for him. Even if he did love me, which I doubt, he knew I didn’t love him. What difference did he make anyway? Why allow your care for him to make you slight me? Even if Lee is dying,” she concluded emphatically, “that’s not half as dramatic as it looks. There are other people who are living—or trying to!”
“But he’s been my pal, my friend, Freda,” he answered very calmly, “and I’m afraid that you’d have to be a man to quite appreciate my feelings.”
It was nothing apparently. Mauney seemed quite unperturbed. As Freda stood regarding his reposeful figure she wondered what she could possibly do to stir him up. Even rudeness to a dying man—for it was that—had not brought the storm she expected. Even scorn of his solicitude for a dying friend—for her words had been that, too—had failed to budge him an inch. And now he was there before her, leaning against the railing, reflectively flipping his finger at the lining of his hat, as if she had merely remarked upon the brilliance of the sinking sun, or the character of the weather.